Sequelitis

Okay, first things first- Harem Collector is now hosted at Mega.


Now, as some of you might have understood from my forum posts here and there. you won't be able to capture all 151 girls in Harem Collector. The reason being is my original design document outlined a game that was too much game for one game. This being my first large-scale RPG Maker project, I had no idea of the limitations of the engine and my own limitations, and it seems to mean that the best thing for the game would not be creating a bloated, confused mess that runs the length of the entire plot. So Harem Collector is being broken down into five discrete parts.

Harem Collector
-Takes place in the Middle Kingdom, a very literally named place which appears to be a more-or-less productive, happy kingdom.
-Will involve recruiting about 30 girls total. For those of you keeping score at home, the current version of the game contains 16.
-There are four main questlines, which will include the Adventurer's Guild, playing the game of houses and becoming a proper noble, saving the elven race from extinction, and participating in magical research on a fallen empire that used to exist where the Middle Kingdom is now.


Harem Collector Part 2: Electric Boogaloo
-Takes place in Kellos, a heavily militarized empire that exists to the east of the Middle Kingdom.
-Again, will involve about 30 new girls. The Hero will take with him a portion of his own household, including Meline for certain but at an appropriate time I'll run polls to see who else will be going.
-There are, again, four main questlines. One will involve joining a resistance group to overthrown the current power structure. One will involve joining a cult that worships Dragons as opposed to the Angels. The others are still up in the air at this point.

 Harem Collector Part 3: Collect Harder
 -Takes place in the frigid, lawless country to the north of the Middle Kingdom.
-Again, will involve about 30 girls. The Hero will take with him a portion of his own household again, including Yamamaya for certain.
-Main questlines will include: ruling over Yamamaya's tribe as her mate, bringing law to the lawless and founding your own kingdom, as well as other things.

Harem Collector 4: Goblet of Fanservice
-Takes place on a tropical archipelago to the far south of the Middle Kingdom, across the ocean, where the Hero will be placed in charge of his own colony by the rulers of the Middle Kingdom.
- Again, about 30 new girls. The Hero will take with him a portion of his existing harem, will will be determined at an appropriate time.
-The primary conflict in this game will involve a case of colonists versus natives. The archipelago will be inhabited by a civilization of alleged "savages" that the Middle Kingdom looks down on but who in fact have a perfectly good civilization already, and the Hero will have to balance the demands of his backers in the Middle Kingdom versus the political realities of deal with the native society. Of course, this whole thing will be played for laughs.

Harem Collector 5: The Fifth One (I've run out of subtitle jokes)
-Takes place partially in the dwarf-inhabited, magitek-powered country to the west of the Middle Kingdom, and partially in another dimension entirely.
-This game will involve batting cleanup. I'm sure that very few of the other games will involve exactly 30 girls, and are more likely to go over than under. This game will involve however many are left.
-The primary conflict in this game will involve an attempt to colonize the setting's analogue to "heaven", which by this point the Hero will have extensive dealings with to the point that the invading country hires him as an consultant.

In terms of the series in general:
-The sequels are spaced apart in time, there being about two years between each. Yes, the Hero will engage in a bit of Wife (Slave?) Husbandry, attempting to win the hearts of girls that will join the harem "officially" in one of the sequels.
-There won't be a lot in terms of importing saves. The games don't involve any moral choices of real significance, and each sequel will assume that you've completed 95% of the content in previous games. IE, questlines and harem girls will be considered to be "fully completed", but things like hidden bosses and bonus dungeons won't be referred to.
-The Hero will keep that shitty, rusty greatsword from beginning to end, and by the time you close out the series it will be a weapon of truly immense power.
-Similarly, while the hero will "let himself go" a little between games, he will start each sequel a little stronger and with a full complement of skills that will get added to.

While the original Harem Collector will take longer, I'm hoping to keep the development cycle for each game to about a year. Game development involves a lot of of what us business types like to call "cumulative advantage". That is, the longer I keep at this, the greater my skills and resources will become, and the better and more-quickly-produced future games will be.

I've also mentioned before wanting to take "time off" between installments of Harem Collector to work on different projects. This is true, and I intend at least to do something slightly different after finishing up Harem Collector 1. This thing, let's call it Project Norn, is a hentai parody game (of course) inspired by the SMT: Persona series. So you have that to one day look forward to.

If you think I'm getting ahead of myself, fear not. Most of what I've outlined is from the original HC design plan, just getting properly spaced out and formed into discrete games. My focus remains on Harem Collector part one, and I intend to make tthat the best game it can be with my current abilities.

Mysteries

Why isn't there a blog post today? It's just one of those mysteries. Like what happened to Amelia Earhart, or why Mindless Self Indulgence hasn't provided music for a Saint's Row game yet.

...Or maybe blog post day is being moved to Wednesday so that downloads and blog posts are collected in a single "Harem Collector Update Day". Who knows?

Harem Collector August 2013 Public Release

Public version 3!

If you are importing an old save, it is extremely important that you speak to the demon standing outside your manor before doing anything else in game.

Edit: Before I forget again, the next release is September 18th for backers and September 25th for the public.

So here it is, that big update I promised. What's new? Well...

-There are two big, new quests! One is started from the Eastfort Adventurer's Guild, the other begins automatically when you complete a quest after having seven harem girls.

-The first-ever freely explorable combat zone/quest area, called the Giant's Path. is now open north of Eastfort.

-There is a little quest that occurs within the Giant's Path.

-There are now unique sprites and faces for Lilac, Violet, Yamamaya and Chimei. Kyrie now has a new face but I'm still using the old sprite because it's cute.

-Healbot now appears in the manor, in the reading room to the right of the master bedroom. You can chat with him to give back his old name.

-Speaking to Larelle or [REDACTED] in the dungeon should now not cause the game to freeze, die and/or email all your porn to your mom anymore, no matter what you do.

-There are five new sex scenes and a bunch of new CGs

-Having certain combinations of party members in certain places will now trigger bits of party banter.

-Chimei can now be purchased from the Slaver's Guild market.

-The total number of Dark Seeds in the game is now up to ten, and the guy who collects them has a new reward for you.

-There is now a Trophy Trader in the Northmarket Slums who will swap your trophies for other trophies, for a small fee.

-Part of the counter in Florine's item shop has been cut away so you can sell your vendor trash/buy stuff and then proceed through instead of exiting out the same you came in and going around.

-All skill use now clearly gives the skill's name, to help you prepare or counter effectively.

-Tomes should grant skills to the person equipping the tome again.

-Experience point rewards for all enemies have been increased by 10%, and the experience curve as been dropped.

-The Necromanceress should now use Murder of Crows less frequently.

-The Health value of the Electric Blue Slime has been increased.

-The fucked up music that occurs in Lumberhill, the manor and the Eastfort condo has been fixed.

-The Backer Monument is current up to August 13^th and the Bugfinder Monument is current up to the July release.

-Numerous other bugfixes have been implemented.

-Herobrine has been removed.

Enjoy your playing!

Free Enterprise

First of all, game status update: Everything is coming together really well and I'm really excited about this month's release. It is the biggest chunk of new content since the original February release itself. I can't wait to get it into your hands! But there's a little bit of stuff to get done today, and it should drop for backers pretty early tomorrow. If I have time to give a character a makeover in the week between the backer release and the public release, let me know who you think it should be in the comments or , you know, the usual away. Your choices are Yamamaya, Florine, Elaiya and Doll, I believe.

Anyway, I had a really cool idea for an MMO yesterday and figured I'd fling it into the interwebs because it's really beyond my capabilities as an alleged "programmer" but I think it'd be a cool idea. I used to own an old Windows 95 game called Free Enterprise. It wasn't particularly spectacular as far as gameplay is concerned but you played an industrial manufacturing entrepreneur making, well, anything you wanted out of a huge list of items. My business was always "Zombie Self-Defense Technology Inc" or something because you could make chainsaws. But, you had to pay attention what was in demand for your location (you got to pick any of a number of cities in the US) or else you'd be in trouble.

But you also had to manage where you received your supplies from and one of the more interesting things the game did was you could either purchase your assembly parts from other companies or, if you wanted to control the process beginning to end, set up machines in such a way so you manufactured every processed part in the process. For example, I could have my chainsaw assembly machine, but hook up to it a small gasoline engine machine, an aluminum casing machine, a chain drive machine, etc, and control the quality of the process at every step. Or simply buy engines and casings from other companies, because you can't afford to pay that many workers or what have you.

But what if there was a version of this as an MMO? Say, a fantasy MMO where everyone played merchant princes. So, I play a merchant prince who specializes in raw iron, and I have a few mines and an ore refining facility of some kind. Nekochan plays the leader of a blacksmith guild, who buys my iron and forges iron goods. Then say, Gurotaku plays a mercenary captain who has to buy Nekochan's swords, but then sells me the guards I need to keep monsters out of my mine. But Geo plays the admiral of a merchant fleet who needs Nekochan's nails to supply his shipyards, and also my raw iron to trade overseas for exotic spices.

So the essential way it works is by having players to fill roles in an economy where everyone is forced to support and work for each other, and there could be EVE Online-esque elements of people forming trading guilds and greater alliances and things. But unlike EVE Online the entire purpose of the game is the economy rather than space exploration or what have you. High level play would consist of managing a truly sprawling merchant empire, where you are invested in multiple fields.

Anyway, just though that'd be a cool idea. This idea is fair use for all, I will make no claim of ownership although I reserve the right to make my own version if I do someday become that leet.

Progress Update

First of all, thank you for all your comments last week. Even the negative comments, because in many ways for this sort of thing playing the devil's advocate is even more useful. Going forward, I can't say for certain what will happen, but don't expect Harem Collector-related merch until the game is almost completed. Even if I finish my business plan and I'm confident about moving forward, it'll be a long time before there are any significant changes. And, of course, working on the game itself is always the priority.

Progress is looking pretty good for next week's release. Oh, did I forget to mention that? The Backer release is on the 14th and the public release is on the 21st. I just finished up one of the new quests yesterday morning. It requires a little polish (and what doesn't in this game?) and I'm immediately diving into the second big quest that's going to drop. That second quest shouldn't take as long (I alreayd know how I'm doing it, and it's a variation on something already in the game) and as a big plus, Gurotaku already has the CGs completed.

If I get that second quest completed, I can focus my energies on something simple, like filling in the towns or something. Anyway, I'll talk to you all next week, when some of you will get the new version and others will get teased mercilessly by mysterious bug reports.

Edit:  Oh yeah, I almost forgot. There are now Dragon Age-style banter spots in the game. When the game drops, I'll actually release pics of their locations because I want people to find them, and let me know if they break flow too much.